Upcoming events

The Iowa Chapter of the Society for Public Health Education (IASOPHE) is a voluntary organization composed of professional public health educations or individuals and students interested in public health education. IASOPHE is both a Chapter of the national Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) and a current section of the Iowa Public Health Association (IPHA).

The mission of IASOPHE is to provide leadership to the profession of health education and to contribute to the health of all people through advances in health education theory and research, excellence in health education practice, and the promotion of public policies conducive to health.

Members are affiliated with a variety of public health settings including local and state health departments, community-based organizations, higher education, schools, worksites, managed care, and health care.

Benefits of membership include:

Professional networking and professional development

Develop and gain advocacy skills to advance public health

Reduced cost for Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) credits

Access to continuing education via programs and webinars

Resource sharing from national SOPHE

Gain leadership skills

Possible internship opportunities

Quarterly newsletter

Membership dues help support IASOPHE activities, advocacy, education, and representation at the national SOPHE annual meeting and conference.

Community violence is a preventable public health issue shaped by many factors, including racism. Violence impacts our overall health and well-being and prevents communities from realizing their full potential.

Hear from APHA Past President Linda Degutis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Howard Pinderhughes of UC San Francisco, Policy Link, and the Prevention Institute for an important discussion about race, place and preventing violence. We’ll explore the role of public health in preventing this epidemic and the value of engaging many sectors in the solution

The journey to improving health is unique in every community. However, these unique journeys are part of a growing movement to build a Culture of Health throughout the country. This County Health Rankings webinar will explore how communities can best share their stories and lessons learned to continue improving health locally and further strengthen a Culture of Health nationally.

We will explore a variety of questions:

How do you tell the story of your community’s journey to health?

Why is telling your story important?

Who should tell your story and who is your targeted audience?

These questions and their answers will be illustrated by a community that has harnessed the power of storytelling to advance health improvement efforts in profound ways. Wade Norwood and Dina Faticone will talk with us about how the Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities initiative in Rochester, NY, leverages data, partners, social marketing, and community engagement to tell a compelling narrative. They will also discuss the role of storytelling in advocacy and policy change as they work to ensure that the healthy choice is an accessible choice for every community member.

This webinar will address the use of exercises to measure emergency preparedness and response. The presentation will include a description of what characteristics are necessary to make exercises an appropriate tool to measure preparedness. Speakers will discuss the processes of designing and conducting exercises in order to best use them to measure preparedness efforts, and they will identify common pitfalls in executing preparedness exercises for evaluation purposes. The speakers will also introduce a free online toolkit that is available to develop exercise evaluation data forms and will discuss recent results from the study of its implementation.

Walking is more than basic transportation and recreation; it is the key to health, longevity and affordable living. If we want more equitable communities–accessible–then walking must become a natural activity again. In this session, Dan Burden, one of the early pioneers in North America’s walkability movement–coining the terms ‘road diets,’ ‘walking audits,’ ‘photomorphs’ and inspiring Complete Streets conversions–will address the link and bond between walking and health.

Integrating physical and mental health services requires that personal health information is shared appropriately across various settings in order to promote care coordination and better outcomes.

This webinar will provide a brief overview by Karla Lopez from the Legal Action Center of the federal statutory framework, specifically in the context of integrating physical and behavioral health care.

This past year, Scott County in Southeastern Indiana was rocked with a rising epidemic of over 150+ new HIV and HCV infections among people who use drugs. Join AIDS United, Drug Policy Alliance and the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance in a collaborative webinar to discuss lessons learned and a way forward following the HIV outbreak that shook Scott County. Bringing together on-the-ground perspectives, this webinar will give an overview and update on the outbreak in Southeastern Indiana, current activities and coordination among various groups, and how harm reduction approaches for people who use drugs have been central to the response.

Prevention doesn’t just improve health and safety, it saves communities money in the long run. Yet too often, organizations must scramble and compete against each other to find new ways to fund their prevention work.

Sustainable funding mechanisms for sexual and domestic violence prevention efforts can help. Join Prevention Institute (PI) and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in discussing how these mechanisms work on August 13th for the last PreventConnect Web conference of 2015.

The ways in which different sectors are able to collect and use newly available data sources range tremendously, due to inherent differences in underlying infrastructure, financing, privacy issues, and the specific innovations that advance particular issues.

In this second Web Forum of the Data and Public Health series, we will examine situations where data is being implemented into public health systems, both domestically and globally. We will discuss the challenges and benefits, and inspire new ways of thinking about how to improve the public’s health.

It takes teamwork to create social change and you need a diverse team with common goals. For walkable community initiatives, the team often starts with advocates for health, advocates for children and people with disabilities, and advocates for social equity. It is also essential to recruit local government officials to the team - especially, traffic engineers, town planners, and elected policy makers. Join councilwoman Elaine Clegg, planner Roger Millar, and engineer Gary Toth to learn how best to engage each of these critical stakeholder groups in your community.

The Iowa Healthcare Collaborative will be hosting a conference on the State Innovation Model (SIM) on Tuesday, August 18 at The Meadows Events & Conference Center in Altoona, IA.

This conference is targeted for care coordination teams, hospitals, managed care companies, state public health officials, healthcare providers, community-based and long term support providers.

The morning sessions will introduce the SIM project and underscore the cooperative nature of this project across the healthcare stakeholder communities of provider, payer and public health. During the afternoon sessions you will hear more detailed pubic presentations of the statewide strategies promoted in the SIM project. The conference will close with “The Undiscovered Country” where the importance of and efforts to advance Care Coordination across the Community, Patient and Family Engagement and Social Determinants of Health will be discussed.

Many in public health see telehealth services — such as doctor-patient video-conferencing — as a game-changer for health care. Telehealth can improve access to health services for patients in rural areas, reduce health care costs, and ensure disease control surveillance through video directly observed therapy (VDOT) and other methods. Experts predict telehealth video visits will soar from 19.7 million in 2014 to 158.4 million annually in 2020. This webinar will examine how telehealth can improve access to health care for rural communities, the use of telehealth in schools, the use of VDOT for the treatment of tuberculosis, and the laws currently regulating telehealth practices in each state.

The Rebalancing Health Care in the Heartland forum series facilitates a public discussion about health care in Iowa. The forums define key challenges in providing high quality health care across Iowa; assess the potential impact of contemporary economic, demographic, and political realities; debate strategies and identify viable solutions for consideration by Iowa's policymakers, and anticipate new and emerging trends that may impact the provision of high quality health care to the people of Iowa.

The University of Iowa is proud to be the organizer of these critical and timely discussions. As a publicly supported academic institution, the University is uniquely positioned to provide a non-partisan forum for the consideration of issues of public interest and concern.

This series is hosted by the University of Iowa Health Sciences Policy Council. Information about this series is available here. Registration will begin in August.

With a variety of educational tracks, a Vendor/Technology Hall, a juried research competition, nationally recognized speakers and more, the conference is designed for professionals, policymakers, students and subject-matter experts who are ready to start re-imagining the aging and disability network.